Jacksonville girls roll into league tournament final

Rick Scoppe Daily News Staff jdnsports

Wednesday

Feb 14, 2018 at 8:14 PMFeb 15, 2018 at 11:50 AM

Jacksonville keeps rolling on.

Kennedy Todd-Williams scored 12 of her 18 points in a dominating first half as the top-seeded Cardinals overwhelmed No. 4 West Carteret 64-21 on Wednesday night to advance to the finals of the Coastal 3-A Conference girls’ basketball tournament.

JHS (18-2) will take on No. 2 Havelock (18-2) on Friday at Northside at 6 p.m. for the title. The Rams beat Northside 57-31 to advance. The Cardinals beat Havelock 70-32 and 73-55 during the regular season.

The Cardinals have now won 15 straight by an average of just under 40 points – not that coach Monique Gidrey doesn’t see things her girls can’t work on.

The reason is simple: Gidrey knows if the Cardinals don’t want to lose in the regional final as they did a year ago, they can’t be satisfied.

“We played pretty well,” Gidrey said. “I’m still expecting a little bit more. I think I got a little bit more that I can get out of these girls. So what we’re going to do is get back in the gym tomorrow and we’re going to revamp and touch up on some things I saw tonight that I really feel we could have done a little bit better.

“But overall it was a good win. We played a good team…, but I just feel like to go for that state run there’s some things that I see that I know we need to clean up.”

In beating the Patriots (14-8) at The Bird Cage, JHS forced 16 first-quarter turnovers to go up 24-1.

West Carteret ended up with 33 turnovers while hitting just 6 of 31 from the field (19.3 percent). JHS, which had 12 turnovers, shot just over 49 percent (27 of 55) in a game that had a running clock from the 5:59 mark of the third quarter.

“We got turnovers, but we weren’t running the press right,” Gidrey said. “We can clean that up because the floor’s going to be a lot bigger moving on and there’s going to be more competition.”

Along with cleaning up some things, Gidrey said another emphasis will be working on JHS’ depth.

“We need to make our bench stronger,” she said. “That’s going to be the goal and the key down the stretch. So that’s what we’re working on. We’re working on unity and being as one as a family because that’s our motto: Family.”